


Hold On

by bi_and_ready



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 14:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15221240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bi_and_ready/pseuds/bi_and_ready
Summary: When you meet again, he isn’t the same.





	Hold On

**Author's Note:**

> This is from Horatio’s perspective. Horatio/Hamlet are my OTP and I’m crazy for tragedies so this must be the most self indulgent shit I could ever write (for now), but have fun, I think u__u
> 
> Nothing here belongs to me. The characters are from Shakespeare, obviously, and the song is The Cave, from Mumford & Sons. Also, I posted this fic in another site, on Portuguese, so this isn’t plagiarism.

_(It's empty in the valley of your heart)_

 

When you meet again, he isn’t the same.

It’s hard, compare this broken boy hiding behind dark humor with the melancholic boy hiding behind sarcasm that you knew before. The similarities are too big and the differences are even bigger. Your head hurts, when he hugs you harder than ever, for a second forgetting his manners and the appearances that you need to kept. It’s weird. He had never forgotten things like this before, never forgotten to stay calm because, as dramatic as he was, he was also a man of stage, always keeping the show flawless.

You notices that he doesn’t care about what will happens anymore, who will discover. He’d always felt anxious with the future, but now he is empty inside and the future is the last of his concerns, when he doesn’t even believe he will live to see tomorrow.

 

 

_(The sun it rises slowly as you walk away from all the fears And all the faults you've left behind)_

You know he is in the edge.

Years before, he ran away from the prison that his home was and he went to a place where everything would be better. He left his obligations, his family, his belongings, the overwhelming expectations of other people, everything he knew, and never once did he missed it. Now, he was pulled to that mess again and you know he isn’t ready to deal with it.

You do the only thing you can do – you stay by his side, like you always do. You cuddle with him in front of a fireplace while he collapses on your arms and you kiss his whole face, even if your tongue tastes like the salt of his tears after. That night, you both don’t sleep and he stays looking to the ashes of the fire with lost eyes, hugging his knees like the scared kid he was one day, the kid that could never seek help from his parents after a nightmare.

This breaks your heart.

 

 

_(The harvest left no food for you to eat You cannibal you meat eater you see)_

 

He is thinner, you notice. There is an emptiness in his face that’s not only caused by his tired eyes and the purple and apparent dark circles below it, but by the real lack of food. He is no longer just thin, he is _frighteningly_ thin. It’s so clear, just from looking at his cheekbones and his hands, his once soft and clear skin now stretched into his bones, that the boy is starving himself.

He only uses black, like always, but you know that now it isn’t just because it's his favorite color, but because he is grieving. For his father. His father, that is dead and he is the only who gives a fuck about it.

It been months. People say he is taking to mutch time to move on. He cried for months and, while he did this, while he acted like a son even if his parents had never acted like parents, his mother turned her back on him and married his uncle.

People say it isn’t incest, technically ( _people are too scared to say the truth, but not him, never him_ ) and that he is being over dramatic. You knows he has the right to take his time to “forget” and anyone who thinks different can go to hell.

 

 

_(But I have seen the same I know the shame in your defeat)_

 

When you have to sit down and watch he get stab, you notice that that would had happened one way or another. You had overlooked the tips, but, to every ignored meals, every nights he passed awake and every time he went talk to his uncle even if he knew that would just made his anxiety worse, he was a step close to death. Maybe it was good, that the sword that take his life was Laerte’s and not Hamlet's.

This doesn’t stop the pain. It doesn’t stop you from understanding every little self-destructive act of him because, at that moment, you understand the pain he passed, you understand what it's like to give up life; that's what you do, when you take that bit of poison left and prepare to join him in his death.

At that moment, you understand what it is to have nothing holding you to life. You understand the madness.

 

 

_(But I will hold on hope)_

But he holds your wrist.

His hand seems so weak, you notice, you wouldn’t even have to use force to get out of his grip. But you don’t do that. Instead, you hold onto that little touch, knowing that this may be the last time you will touch him.

And then he asks you to stay. He asks you to tell his story, and for a second, you get angry. It’s so selfish, that he wanted to make you stay there after him, that you just want to cry and shout and ask _why? Why you don't want to stay with me, my prince?_

Then you look at him, your heart in your hand and you see him, so small, so scared and you know.

 

 

_(And I won't let you choke On the noose around your neck)_

 

You could never say no to him. Not when his eyes shine for the first time in months for something other than tears, but for the happiness of finding that he had finally ~~made his father proud~~  avenged his father.

You couldn’t let him and his legacy die. You couldn’t leave the tragic story of what had really happened in that castle die with him, here and now.

Because he deserves more, you know. Much more than anything that happened to him and much, much more than dying and being remembered as a murderer.

So you put the poison on the ground.

And you l i v e.

 

 

_(And I'll find strength in pain)_

 

When Fortinbras calls you privately, you give him a shortened version of what happened, but that's the closest you go to keeping your promise. Eventually you can go back to Wittenberg.

You go back to your old room, outside the fields because you don’t have the money to pay for something in there. You work, you study, you eat. Your body is on autopilot, doing all the things you need to do to keep you from dying. Nothing else.

He still appears to you, through your dreams. But he looks like he was just before his death, thin and sad and broken. It's still better than when you wake up and it's not there at all. So you do the only thing you can do: you rely on the dream world in the hope of getting enough strength to continue.

You eventually begin to write The Story, almost two years after his death, and as the seasons change and you remember and write more and more about what happened in Elsinore, you feel a kind of peace about yourself. It's almost finishing. You almost fulfilled your promise.

And you do. After many long nights of constant writing, you finally end.

 

 

_(And I will change my ways)_

 

As you look at everything you have written, firmly awake, finally alive, you feel a huge wave of relief fall upon you. Relief to the fact that everything is finished and that now you can finally come back to live.

It's not that easy.

You are different. He changed you.

You get into fights and punch anyone who dares comment on what happened. You cry until you sleep and drink cheap whiskey in bars so dirty that would make him vomit just from smelling it. In the morning, you drown in studies, spend days without eating because you are too busy with your books, and even when you take the best grades out of the room, you still don‘t feel complete.

He was gone, and with him had taken a part of you: your best part.

 

 

_(I'll know my name as it's called again)_

 

Years later, you meet again, in the Heaven above. Once, so long ago, he had told you that there were many more things between Heaven and Hell, but at that moment you don’t care about things you cannot understand. You just care about him and how your name looks so sweet and soft coming out of his mouth.

And you run up to him and you hug as you had when you met in Elsinore for the first time. You hold his face and you both are teenagers again, before the ghosts and ~~real~~  false madness, and you kiss him. And, just like that, you have him back in your life, healthy and happy and that's all you need, you realize.


End file.
